AMD took the opportunity at Computex to show server platforms running the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, codenamed
Barcelona, with the help of MSI, Supermicro, TYAN and Uniwide

The AMD quad-core processors are designed
to drop-in (following a BIOS upgrade) with all existing AMD
Opteron processor-based systems using DDR2 memory, while also
enabling new platform capabilities such as those being demonstrated today.

One vendor demonstrated Barcelona to DailyTech, running at 1.6GHz. According to engineers familiar with the chip technology, the current AMD Barcelona samples are not scaling core frequencies well. AMD partners confirmed the highest running, POST and OS capable, Barcelona processor is 2.0 GHz. AMD previously posted benchmarks of a simulated 2.6 GHz Barcelona.

“We commend AMD for its non-disruptive
roadmaps, allowing for a smooth upgrade from dual-core to quad-core,” said
Danny Hsu, president, TYAN. “Streamlining and mitigating the complexities
customers often face when upgrading their IT infrastructure is especially
important in today’s competitive marketplace. TYAN has collaborated with AMD
since 2001, and we will continue to support and take advantage of the
customer-centric innovation AMD is offering in its quad-core processors when
they are made available later this year.”

AMD roadmaps show Barcelona-based Opteron processors will launch in July, but the general consensus from partners is the processor isn’t performing well enough for a July launch.

“Quad-core, codenamed Barcelona will launch later this summer, in the July,
August kind of time frame -- followed by [consumer chips] on the desktop... You'll
see that in the Christmas line-up,” stated Robert Rivet, AMD executive
vice president and CFO, just a few months ago.

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AMD was, and most likely will always be the underdog. (yes, Im an AMD fan, although I type from a C2D mobile :) )The only reason people are worried about AMD is because they fail to (or are to young to) remember before 2003, when Intel smoked every AMD out there. The only competitive advantage was their prices.In essence, Intel fucked up, sat on their laurels, and netbursted their way into second place. Intel, at least 50% larger than AMD, has FAR more resources to dump into the game. The reason AMD is falling behind, is because of the die shrinks (and the rapidity at which they are occurring... anyone remember how long we were at .90?) cost a HUGE amount of money to develop and fab. As a corporation, Intel is far better equipped to outflow that volume of resources.

I honestly dont understand why people are worried. AMD is simply defaulting back to historically what they have been good at - price cutting for a better performance/price ratio. This lets their high end stuff go up against Intel's mid/ mid-high range parts, at half the price. They hurt em where they can.

Basically the 64bit and x2 procs woke the sleeping giant that was Intel. All we can hope for now is that AMD keeps snipping at the giants heels, driving them forward.

Also, AMD CHIPS DONT HAVE THE N-BRIDGE ONBOARD!!!!!Ive head this many times, and it pisses me off. They have the memory controller on-die. Thats it. Not the whole N-Bridge...And I believe Intel said they were going to an integrated MC with the Penryn, although I could be mistaken

AMD had faster 486 chips than Intel. The K6 was also faster than the Pentium and the Pentium Pro. Not many people knew these things, because Intel had a much more marketing and clout in the industry. At that time, it was always assumed that Intel had the best quality, because other chips were known to have poor quality (like Cyrix) and Intel was a safe bet. Intel did not always have better chips than AMD. I would even go so far as to say that AMD had the better processor throughout most of the 90's.

As for the memory contoller; Intel plans on incorporating that with the next architecture change, not the next die shrink. It will likely be available at the end of 2008. Nehalem is the Intel chip that should have the memory controller on the die.

Amd's faster 486 chip was the 5x86-133 which was about equaly to a pentium 66.

Sure AMD had faster 486 than Intel but by the time it came out the pentium was already out. They also had a faster 386 the 386-40. But that was actually a complete clone, just running faster.

The k6 really wasn't better than the Pentium it was maybe equiavlent and had a poorer FPU. the Pentium MMX 233 was faster than the k6-233 and at the time the k6-233 was overclocked at 3.2 volts compared to 2.9 for the k6-200 and 166 for .35 micron node. The Pentium MMX was much cooler running at the time (and at the time 35 watts TDP was a lot).

That said, it was competitive. By the time the k6-266 and 300 came out on .25 micron, the k6 was getting blown away by the pentium ii. And the Pentium II was head and shoulders above any k6-2 , the only thing really competitive was the super expensive and hard to find k6-3 chips or the few k6-2+ laptop chips.

So basically the entire k6 generation was not quite up to par / slightly behind. This was around the time that AMD was nearly bankrupt like now, and its stock fell to like $4-5. I remember I was a huge AMD fan boy and bought stock when I got out of high school.

the K7 was better than most p3s and earlier p4s until the northwood. That was around when AMD actually recovered out of their near bankruptcy around then the first german fab opened.

Also , for the reliability thing. HP was one of the first major OEMs to pick up AMD. Coincidentally I worked at an HP factory (since closed and moved to mexico btw) in california when they first got k6-2 300-350 chips.

The failure rate was easily 3 times as high for dead on arrival or chips that didnt quite perform to spec compared to the intel class equivalents (which were the celeron 300 a and 333 a in the systems we were refurbing / building).

That was a terrible summer job btw, but the AMD is not as reliable thing was definitely true back then. They were binning chips too high just to try to keep up with the Pentium III and Celeron As

AMD quad cores do have the northbridge on-chip as well. If you look at the die shots from the past posts, it clearly labels the northbridge. In addition to the memory controller, the northbridge probably handles a lot of the inter-core communication.